Continuity SoftwareTM, the world's leading provider of service availability risk management solutions, today announced the results of its 2013 Financial Services Availability Benchmark study. The first of its kind, it reveals that while financial services organizations are obligated to establish and report stringent service availability objectives for mission-critical systems, they are actually among the worst performing in regards to meeting these goals. In fact, 41% of those surveyed acknowledged that they did not meet their service availability goals for mission-critical systems in 2012.

Continuity Software also announced today the results of its second annual 2013 Enterprise Service Availability and Business Continuity Benchmark survey. Based upon responses from IT executives across a wide range of industries, the results reveal that much like the financial services industry, they also have highly commendable service availability goals for mission-critical systems. Nonetheless, 32% of the organizations surveyed reported that they did not meet their goals.

"The Continuity Software 2013 Financial Services Availability Benchmark study and the 2013 Enterprise Service Availability and Business Continuity Benchmark survey offer executives responsible for their organization's IT, disaster recovery (DR) and/or business continuity an opportunity to see how their own goals and results stack-up in comparison to their peers," said Doron Pinhas, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Continuity Software. "More importantly, it points out the most common causes for outages, as well as presents the most effective strategies for ensuring service availability."

89% of financial service organizations have an availability goal of >99.76% (less than 22 hours of downtime a year); 67% have a goal of >99.91% (less than eight hours); and 25% have a goal of 99.99% (less than one hour).

90% of business organizations have an availability goal of >99.76% (less than 22 hours of downtime a year); 68% have a goal of >99.91% (less than eight hours); 27% have a goal of 99.99% (less than one hour).

32% of the survey respondents did not meet their goals.

The lowest downtime figures were reported by respondents from the transportation industry (3.7 hours average/year), followed by high-tech (4 hours), and business service organizations (4.2 hours).